Will Muschamp on his late father: He was my mentor, my friend, my hero.

(Stephen M. Dowell, MCT )

May 19, 2014|Mike Bianchi, SPORTS COMMENTARY

Too often, we perceive college football coaches as those scowling faces on TV: the ranting, raving actors in our own sports-themed Saturday afternoon reality shows. They are simply characters and caricatures whom we lambaste on message boards and lampoon in sports columns.

In our minds, they are inhuman and impervious — unfeeling, unflinching and unfazed by the real world around them. They don't have feelings. They are, after all, football coaches, not real people.

And then you hear Florida Gators coach Will Muschamp talk about his father Larry, who passed away suddenly two weeks ago. And this is when you realize that beneath those many coaching layers of intensity, drive, focus and ferocity, there's not only a real man hiding in there, there's a wide-eyed little boy.

"My father was my mentor, my friend and the best advice-giver I can ever imagine," says the Gators coach, Larry's youngest son. "He was my hero and my role model."

Larry Muschamp died at age 79 from complications following intestinal surgery. He was an educator, a coach, a husband and a father. And a damn good father. In this day and age when deadbeat dads have become a national epidemic, Larry Muschamp was a heartbeat dad.

"The heartbeat of our family," says Pat Muschamp, Larry's middle son.

"He was bigger than life," says Mike Muschamp, the oldest of Larry's three sons. "The greatest man who ever lived."

Isn't it funny how college coaches like Will Muschamp spend so much time trying to mold and mentor other people's kids that sometimes we forget they are other people's kids? Larry and Sally Muschamp successfully raised their three boys — Mike, Pat and Will — in a house filled with faith, family and football.

Lots of football.

Larry played football at the University of North Carolina and his own father — Will's grandfather — played for a year at Penn State. Larry told me the story once of when Will was 6 years old and would put on his tiny football uniform and helmet and play backyard football all by himself. His grandfather — Papa Mus, they called him — would sit in a rocking chair on the back porch and laugh and cheer when the boy would put a move on a make-believe linebacker and run over a pretend safety to score an imaginary touchdown.

The Muschamp boys loved football because their dad loved it. Larry watched it, coached it and taught his boys how to play it. He also taught them how football is a lot like life. You have your good times like Will's Gators had two years ago when they were 11-2 and you have your bad times like last season (4-8). But if you stay true to who you are, the good times will soon overtake the bad ones.

"Tough times don't last," Larry would tell his sons. "Tough people do."

You ever wonder why Will Muschamp is so brutally honest when dealing with his players, the referees, the media? You ever wonder why he holds his star players just as accountable as he holds the scout-team scrubs? It's because his father was the same way. Larry didn't care who you were; he would always tell you exactly what was on his mind.

Once when he was the new principal at an exclusive private school, he changed one of the school's long-standing policies — much to the chagrin of some of the parents. One of those parents, the daughter of the school's chairman of the board, came to his office to complain.

"Do you know who I am?" she asked snootily.

"I know exactly who you are," Larry replied.

"Well, I don't appreciate you changing the way we do things," she said. "You need to leave the policy the way it was before."

Larry informed her that the new policy was for the good of the entire school.

"I'm the daughter of the head of the board of trustees," the woman threatened.

"Well, I'm a son of God," Larry said with a smile. "Can you top that?"

Will Muschamp laughs long and hard when telling the story and finishes it off by exclaiming proudly, "That was my dad!"

For this brief moment, he is no longer one of the most intense, consumed, hard-driving football coaches in the business.

He is no longer Will Muschamp.

He is simply Larry Muschamp's boy.

A boy who desperately misses his father, his friend, his hero.

mbianchi@tribune.com. Follow him on Twitter @BianchiWrites. Listen to his radio show every weekday from 6 to 9 a.m. on 740 AM.